


Petals, Fallen and Adrift

by RhazadeWaterbender



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Eye Trauma, Gen, Injury, Red Lotus, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Surviving Villains Must Suffer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-18 14:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2352212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhazadeWaterbender/pseuds/RhazadeWaterbender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the reports of certain deaths were exaggerated...for all the good that it does them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Petals, Fallen and Adrift

Her shoulders and ribcage feel battered.  More alarmingly, it hurts to breathe, and her heart is jittering wildly.  Reflexively, she pulls the little pool into a cocoon around her traumatized body, calling upon the healing properties of the element that has been her adaptation, her utility, her _survival_.

As the water does its work, an incongruous indignation—albeit one tempered with dread—rises within her:  She’s just narrowly escaped being _killed_ by a morose whelp scarcely more than half her age.

Her thoughts are interrupted by a scratching sound nearby, from underneath a half-slagged pile of rocks.

So he’d survived as well.  She works the ends of her water tendrils into the crevices, freezing them and chipping the rocks away as she does—helping him, however unnecessarily.

He emerges scorched and bruised, as is to be expected.  If those boys hadn’t been convinced that he was dead, he explains, he’d have ended up back on that barge.  Not much time for finesse.

Remembering the crater, she sympathizes.

The cavern is in shambles, empty save for them.  Abandoned altogether, no doubt—as, most likely, are they.

Their foes have retreated, but the puddle of deadly quicksilver—carefully avoided—on the stony ground near the mouth of the cave tells the story.  They’re not merely abandoned; they’re _beaten_ as well.

Of their strategist and _de facto_ leader, there’s no sign.  If he’s even still alive, he’s certainly been caught.  And this time, they know, precautions will be taken to not only ensure that he can no more escape than _they_ could have without his help—even with the talent he’d won at far too high a cost—but that no one inclined to rescue him will be able to even so much as _find_ him.

It’d be best, they decide, to retrieve whatever remains of the tall, aloof sniper whom he'd loved and lay her to rest—unlikely though it may be that he'll ever know.

It’s the remainder of the day’s furtive trip to return to the meeting site, past the collapsed ruin of the monastery.  As the sun sets, the man shapes a stone tent to hide them.

Scant hours later, they’re awakened when something lurches, sobbing brokenly, past their shelter.

By all rights, the sniper shouldn’t have survived.  She should have been ash.  As it is, her hair is gone, her face blistered, her forehead scraped raw, her silk-and-leather attire charred as if she’d gone up in flames—as, indeed, she had.  But somehow, she’s not only lived, but limped her way down from the summit.

The tiny healer does her work—finding, as she does, deeper injuries that might have killed her friend after all if left untreated.  But there are some wounds that she can’t fix:  Although tissue and bone mend smoothly enough for the most part, it becomes clear that the blast—desperately curtailed, at the last instant, though it must have been—has almost entirely effaced the sniper’s ājňā tattoo.

Without a focus, any attempt to use _that_ ability would at best fail.  At worst, it would finish the job that was begun by hooding her like a messenger hawk.  It's perhaps almost merciful that the overdeveloped chakra beneath what's now a webwork of scar tissue seems to have snapped shut as if it truly _were_ another eye:  For all intents and purposes—at least, for now—the talent is lost to her.

More worrisome, however, is the empty look in the one russet eye that's not beyond what anything short of spirit water could have saved.  Big and implacable as the sniper—no, not even _that_ any longer—may be, there’s always been something brittle about her.  Now, she’s as defeated and adrift as they are, scarred and half-blinded, stripped of some measure of her former power…and bereaved.

"Were we _wrong_?” It’s the first thing she’s said—a hollow, broken little rasp.  “And if we were right… _why_?”

That word encompasses all of their questions: why they’d failed.  Why the strategist, even with his newfound gift, had been taken again.  And why they, the remaining exemplars, had seemingly been cast aside and left for dead.

The answer hangs unvoiced:  It had gone awry thirteen years ago, the moment they’d been thwarted in their plan to subvert the girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long story short: I decided to let everyone survive, but to eff up P'Li a bit worse.

**Author's Note:**

> Consider this the more-or-less final edition of _Petals_.  Why, yes; I _did_ conclude that I needed to eff up P'Li a bit worse.


End file.
